The Software

Our goal is to solve massive computational problems related to protein folding research. The problems require so many calculations, we ask people to donate their unused computer power to help us crunch some of the numbers. Servers at Stanford University deliver individual “work units” to thousands of computers around the world. Each of these work units is a small piece of a massive problem. When a computer finishes a work unit, it sends the results back to Stanford and gets a new work unit. Stanford’s computers then stitch together all the results to solve bigger problems.

Folding@home

In 2000 we released our software to the public and very soon after we had thousands of computers donating otherwise unused computer power. We called the software Folding@home because the software runs while you do other things like cooking, playing, and working. It runs even while you sleep.

You will notice your computer working a little harder than usual, but for most people it doesn’t get in the way of your doing your normal work.

Supporting Software

OpenMM

Gromacs

We have recently incorporated and heavily modified the Gromacs molecular simulation package for Folding@home. We are continuing to work with the Gromacs developers to further improve Gromacs. For more details, see our Gromacs page.